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Recent events at the Birmingham Rep have
provoked a new debate on stage censorship and the right to freedom
of speech. The protestations
which resulted in Kaur Bhatt’s Behzti being cancelled
has led many theatre workers and historians to hark back to the
furore surrounding Howard Brenton’s The Romans in Britain (1980)
and beyond to the ‘banned’ plays of 1965, Edward
Bond’s Saved and John Osborne’s A Patriot
for Me.
While that debate rages it seems worth dwelling
on one positive aspect of the censor’s role in British
theatre up to 1968, namely, the preservation of a script of every
play ever performed
or intended for performance in a licensed venue in Britain.
As ‘licenser’ of plays and play venues, the Lord Chamberlain’s
Office received and studied a script of every play, revue, pantomime
and operetta that theatres and agents wanted to produce. In some
cases they refused to license the piece (Mrs Warren’s
Profession, The Mikado, which had its licence withdrawn after
complaints from the Japanese embassy, Saved and A Patriot
for Me, among others), in most cases they suggested some amendments
in the name of decency, propriety or diplomacy, and in all cases
they retained a copy of the script in the office at St James’ Palace.
These scripts and the correspondence and licences pertaining to
them are now held at the British Library, giving us a unique
record of every play performed in Britain between 1834 and 1968.
In theory, the British Library should hold
a copy of every new play performed after 1968, thanks to a little-known
requirement in the Theatres Act of 1968 which obliges theatres to
deposit a copy of every new script performed in a licensed space
at the British Library. The ‘little-known’ aspect of
the requirement has, in practice, meant that many scripts have not
been deposited.
The Library’s holdings post-1968 stand
at around 11,000 scripts: 12,594 were sent to the Lord Chamberlain
for licensing between 1945 and 1954, and a further 8,865 were submitted
between 1955 and 1965. On the basis of this figures it seems likely
that the Modern Playscripts Collection (as the British Library refers
to the post-68 deposits) is somewhat lacking. Our job is to find
them; in order to augment the British Library’s unique theatrical
holdings for future theatre workers and researchers, and to ensure
that Britain’s vibrant and diverse theatrical culture is preserved
for future generations.
I began this task in September 2004 as part
of the Arts and Humanities Research Board University of Sheffield
British Library Theatre
Archives Project team, led by Professor Dominic Shellard. My brief
was to find out which scripts were missing from the British Library’s
collection, obtain a copy, and interview anyone who might know
anything about the minor stipulation in the most important piece
of theatre legislation for nearly two centuries.
The background
Were it not for the indefatigable lobbying
of Jack Reading, then Secretary to the Society for Theatre Research,
there would be no
script deposit requirement, no Modern Playscripts Collection, and
theatre history would be immeasurably poorer. The Theatres Act
of
1968 repealed the Lord Chamberlain’s power to censor stage
plays before granting a licence for performance. It was the culmination
of a long and arduous battle, begun in the early 20th century,
and
only won after two Joint Select Committees (one in 1909, one in
1966) debated the whys and wherefores of censorship and the nature
and power of theatre to influence public morals and ideology.
The 1966 committee interviewed a number
of playwrights, directors, members of the Society of West End
Theatre Managers, and the Lord
Chamberlain’s staff before finally recommending the abolition
of pre-censorship. The committee’s findings were made public
on 21 June 1967, and on 29 November 1967 George Strauss’ Theatres
Bill was formally introduced into the House of Commons and read
for the first time alongside a number of other Private Members’
Bills. Since the committee’s findings had been made public,
Jack Reading had lobbied various public figures and institutions
about the need for future scripts to be preserved, among them the
Lord Chamberlain’s Office and the director of the British
Museum, Sir Frank Francis. John Johnston, a senior figure on the
Lord Chamberlain’s staff, recalls that:
As early as September 1967 the Society
for Theatre Research wrote to Lord Cobbold expressing a desire
for the preservation
of the MSS of new plays in some way for the future. The Society
was told that this was a matter for the Home Office to decide.
[…] At the Second Reading of the Bill in the House of Lords,
Lords Norwich and Farrington expressed the hope that some plan
would be made to preserve the MSS of new plays somewhere, to
which Lord Annan replied that the Trustees of the British Museum
would like the British Library to be sent a copy of all new plays,
as it was of all new books.
When Sir Frank Francis learned that new
plays came into the Lord Chamberlain’s office at the rate of over 800 a year, the
British Museum became less enthusiastic about receiving scripts.
George Strauss, the author of the Theatres Bill, also became markedly
less enthusiastic about Reading’s amendment as the Bill moved
closer to becoming law. His chief concern was that a late amendment
(April 1968) would jeopardise the Bill’s chances of being
passed.
In a lecture to the Society for Theatre
Research on 4 December 2003, Reading modestly described his vital
contribution to the preservation
of theatre history, as a matter of “getting my own way […]
I only did what I did because I like getting my own way [and] I
believed what I wanted would one day be of some importance”.
Reading reflected that his victory was won by a chance meeting which
gave ‘me an offer to move the amendment to the upper house’.
The chance meeting was with Lord Farringdon, whom Reading met at
a dinner party in April 1968, and who hinted that he might be willing
to move an amendment even at such a late stage. Stricken with flu,
Reading composed an amendment for Farringdon’s consideration.
Incredibly, Farringdon accepted the wording and introduced the
clause
on 8 July. After an initial struggle, the amendment was approved
and the Reading Amendment became law when the Theatres Act came
into force on the 26 September 1968. Section Eleven, Paragraph
One
of the 1968 Theatres Act decrees that:
Where after the coming into force of this section there is given
in Great Britain a public performance of a new play, being a
performance based on a script, a copy of the actual script on
which that performance was based shall be delivered to the Trustees
of the British Museum free of charge within the period of one
month beginning with the date of the performance; and the Trustees
shall give a written receipt for every script delivered to them
pursuant to this section.
Reading recalled that few rejoiced at the
passing of amendment “even the British Library thought I was
trying to saddle them with a load of unwanted and unwanted scripts”,
but now the British Library, theatre workers and theatre scholars
have much to thank him for - not least his tenacity and foresight.
Sadly Reading died earlier this year before
the Scripts project began, but not before he knew of the project’s
intentions and bequeathed his correspondence on the matter to
the British Library.
The scripts project
My first task when I began the Scripts Project was to organise
a press release publicising the project and the scripts stipulation
and asking for help and information from the sector and the general
public. My second was to write to all theatres and theatre companies
in the UK requesting details of all the new works they had performed/produced
since 1968. As replies trickled (and continue to trickle) in from
these sources I discovered more and more missing scripts, and crucially,
that the work of community and minority groups is in danger of being
erased from history, as they are the least likely to know about
the stipulation, or have the financial resources to comply with
it.
The third task was to see what clues lay
in the Modern Playscripts Collection itself. A few days in the
British Library checking the
early scripts deposits and the letters that accompanied them revealed
a number of interesting facts. A 1969 letter to the Library’s
Keeper of Manuscripts from RSC dramaturge Mike Stott revealed
that
the President of the Society for West End Theatre Managers (now
the Society of London Theatre Managers/Theatrical Management
Association),
Emile Litler, sent a memo to all theatres reminding them of their
duties under the new act. Another letter mentioned that the Library
had sent a letter to The Stage bemoaning the lack of
new plays that had been sent to them since the Act. More tellingly,
the letters and compliment slips from amateur theatre groups
suggest
that, as ever, law strikes fear into the heart of the ordinary
person, but not necessarily into that of the big corporation.
SOLT/TMA are
currently searching for a copy of Emile Litler’s letter and
a list of the theatres it was sent to. I have also contacted The
Stage to ask for any information they have about the letter.
One of my first contacts was with Peter Cheeseman,
former artistic director of the Victoria Theatre in Stoke. Peter
had a complete run of prompt scripts for all performances at the
Vic, and a list of all the new plays performed at the Vic which
he invited me to check against the Library’s list. At this
stage in the project it seems that he is virtually unique in two
ways: in having kept an archive of the theatre, and in the scrupulousness
with which he had deposited every single new play with the British
Library. When I questioned him about this, he recalled that it was
a condition of Arts Council funding that new plays were deposited
with the theatre. This was confirmed by Hilary Burns, administrator
of NTC touring theatre who not only remembers the Arts Council’s
stipulation but was able to provide me with a copy of the memo.
At the time of writing (April 2005) I have
identified over 1,000 missing scripts, and received just over
200 of those requested.
The Theatres Act has made the newspapers again for the first time
since the late 60s, and Jack Reading’s tenacity has made the
nation’s theatrical heritage richer than ever. Some theatres
and companies deposit scripts regularly without being prompted,
some deposit when prompted, many do not deposit at all, and were
probably not even aware of their duty to until a few months ago.
What has become clear from my correspondence
with various theatre workers is that the urgency of live performance
leaves little room for the consideration of posterity. With the
support of the Arts Council and the help of TMA members I hope that
we can boost the British Library’s collection without putting
more pressure on an already pressurised sector. Equally, in order
not to put further strain on the British Library, I would ask that
in the first instance, all enquiries are directed to us at Sheffield,
rather than to the Library. If you are looking to deposit scripts
the general rule of thumb is that anything pre-2004 should come
to Sheffield, and anything else should be sent to the Department
of Western Manuscripts of the British Library, marked PLAYSCRIPT
on the envelope. These scripts will then be deposited at the British
Library in a public ceremony at the end of 2005. I would like to
thank everyone who has responded to me so far, particularly those
who have endured further enquiries, or bravely borne the bad news
that there are 30, 40, 100 scripts missing from their theatre. Also
my thanks to Peter Cheeseman, Colin Chambers, Nicola Thorold and
Charles Hart at the Arts Council who have helped set me on the right
course.
Kate Dorney |
